This week the Department of the Interior grandly announced plans for its March oil and gas lease sale in the Central Gulf of Mexico, off Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The announcement might have been more fitting for Groundhog Day.

In the old days, economic crises were organic events that reflected popular greed, economic instability and tangible fear. Speculative bubbles burst, bank depositors panicked and stock markets (and stockbrokers) plunged. No more. We have grown too sophisticated for all that.

Our economy has reached a degree of complexity that its crises must be planned, packaged and marketed just like Cocoa Puffs.

We mourn the loss of life and pray for the missing worker. We wish the injured a speedy recovery. I am dismayed by a new development: U.S. board issues subpoena on offshore platform blast (Reuters) – A U.S. industrial accident investigative board served Black Elk Energy with a subpoena on Monday, seeking information about last week’s offshore Gulf of Mexico oil platform explosion that left | Read More »

The issue of Climate Change has been a no-show in the 2012 election cycle; one would think that ManBearPig had been named an endangered species. But a two-year study commisioned by Barack Obama’s Treasury Department will recommend ways to “green” the tax code by using it to craft disincentives for creating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If you wanted to design a sure-fire recovery-killer, | Read More »

According to an article in The New York Times, on August 15 of this year a successful cyberattack struck Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company and the world’s largest oil producer. The virus-based attack wiped the hard drives of 30,000 personal computers, three-fourths of the company’s internal network, replacing data files with the image of a burning American flag. Damage was limited to the corporate | Read More »

Tuesday evening, Mitt Romney summed up his opponent nicely: “[President Obama] has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal.” With a little less ideology and a little more pragmatism, Barack Obama might have forged a legacy as the Energy President. Much as Bill Clinton rode the groundswell of the 1990s internet boom, Mr. Obama might have been able to translate his good fortune into political capital. But he didn’t.

What is the value of fact checking if the fact-checkers don’t have a clue about the facts they’re checking? CNN’s fact checkers accuse Mitt Romney of playing fast and loose with the data. In reality, he displayed a masterful executive-level command of the issues. It’s President Obama they should worry about.